Last week a senior officer of the Finnish Navy indicated that his service was interested in acquiring an improved version of the South African Umkhonto naval surface-to-air missile (SAM). Commodore (Cdre) Veli-Pekka Heinonen, was talking to the journal “IHS Jane’s Navy International”. Cdre Heinonen is Chief of the Maritime Systems Division of the Finnish Defence Forces’ Logistics Command.

He was talking to the British publication about the Finnish Navy’s current major modernisation programme, Squadron 2020, which will transform the country’s fleet. This programme involves both the upgrading of some existing vessels and the acquisition of new ships, to replace older craft which will be obsolete by the 2020s. 

Under the Squadron 2020 programme, the Navy’s two existing Hämeenmaa-class minelayers and four Rauma-class missile boats will be replaced and the four much more recent Hamina-class missile boats will be upgraded. The six vessels that will be disposed of will be replaced by four new and larger ships, variously described as offshore patrol vessels (OPVs), multipurpose ships or corvettes.

The Finnish Navy already operates the Umkhonto, a product of Denel Dynamics, part of the State-owned Denel defence industrial group. Finland was, in fact, the first export customer for the missile, which it fitted to the Hämeenmaa-class and Hamina-class ships. In the words of the “Jane’s” journal, Heinonen affirmed that “an updated version of the Denel Umkhonto SAM is in the frame to meet the air-defence requirement”. The missile would equip both the new corvettes and the upgraded Hamina-class missile boats.

Denel Dynamics has already mapped out an upgrade path for the weapon. The next step would be a longer-ranged version, the Umkhonto-EIR (E for extended range), which would allow the weapon to be used as a local area air defence system – that is, to protect other, nearby, ships as well as the launching ship.

Beyond the Umkhonto-EIR, the company has plans to develop a radar-guided Umkhonto-ER version, incorporating technologies being developed in its Marlin technology demonstration programme (which, in time, will hopefully lead to a fully-developed Marlin missile).